As many of you know, I just retired from teaching, having spent most of my career in first grade. Over the last few years, my teaching had become gradually more restricted. Instead of running a center-based day, I was required to run scheduled periods of Fundations, Writing Workshop, Reading Workshop, and (this year) of Envision math. To encourage me to retire, my district had made a financial offer that was difficult to refuse. Almost simultaneously, my daughter had announced that she was pregnant with twins. The decision became easier and easier. As the pressures in New York State increased, I decided what I wanted to do after retire: support families, fight the tests, tutor children to learn DESPITE the tests. That would mean running workshops for parents about curriculum. But that’s not what I want to write about tonight. I want to tell you about my last few weeks of teaching, and about my last good lesson.

The district isn’t replacing me next year due to shrinking numbers. Once I announced my retirement, the vultures began to circle – teachers seeking furniture, leveled books, left over supplies. (All of a sudden, my hoarding had value!) Gradually, my room became emptier and emptier. You’d have thought that my teaching would have suffered, but — I LOVED IT, AND SO DID THE KIDS!!! Painting, gluing, research, math projects; WE ALL RELISHED THE CHANGE! It was a very special time – though teary, for some. I’m not sure why my retiring should result in so many sad children (since I wouldn’t have been their teacher the following year), but there you have it.

Driving to school on my last full day, I thought about what I could teach that day in my empty classroom. All I had was art paper, scotch tape, and crayons. The kids had already taken home their markers. I thought about how I could say good-bye. I wanted to help them gain some perspective. I wanted them to know they had each other. (I’d already told them they could email.) I thought about how our paths had crossed and come together so arbitrarily, but how being together in this class had changed all our lives. And then I knew what I’d do!

I gave each child one piece of 12″ x18″ paper. I told them that each child was to draw a path across the paper. It could be straight across or curved or jagged – whatever. We agreed that the paths would be about a fist wide, and had to be drawn in purple. The rest of the paper was to be decorated with whatever else they thought might have been on their paths this year.

Everyone did as I requested after a few false starts. Some of the drawings were quite thoughtful and charming. I then told the kids that we were now going to connect our paths together. I was having a small get together that night, and I told the children we needed something on the wall. Immediately, some of the kids became excited, and tried to put their papers together. I suggested that the kids get on the floor and connect their paths like a puzzle, assemble their work on the floor, and that we’d move it to the wall later. I’d never done this activity before, and had no idea how it would turn out. Over the coarse of the next half hour, I kept telling myself: Remember, it’s process over product.

As the kids worked, I gradually stepped back. The children were making decisions about which paths connected, which looked best together, which should be moved to a different spot. There were no arguments, even though there were differences of opinion. I handed the kids scotch tape dispensers as needed. I mentioned to one little boy that it was great that there were no fights. He said to me, “Well, remember when I invented a game for the playground and then we all had a fight because I wanted to make all the rules? Remember how you explained to me how a true leader doesn’t make all the rules, but helps others to join in? Well – maybe that’s what we’ve all been doing.”

I was absolutely floored.

That’s when I knew how much I’d miss teaching. That feeling of molding a group and helping them become better together than singly – that’s amazing.

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Creative!!!!!
Love this post!!
This again is where the High Stakes Testing has overshadowed the teacher’s creativity.
Thinking of 1000 things you can do on your way to work…but you have to follow the testing pacing guide and teach a test….so sad…

Thank you, Diane. This is indeed a GREAT teacher. Too bad she felt she had to leave. She could no longer “hurt” kids with the mandates. This teachers has found so many things to do to buck the system and her students have flourished. I feel sorry that she decided to leave, but cannot blame her one bit. I quit in Aug. 2001…couldn’t stand the nonsense or the forner governor writing to all the deans o colleges of education in the state of CO telling them what literacy books were on his approved and unapproved list. Decided that I cannot do nonsense and from a governor no less.

Thinking of 1000 things you can do on your way to work…but you have to follow the testing pacing guide and teach a test….so sad…

Constant fights with the administration over this. As presented, I’ll wager most raters would say “good teaching,” though more than a few would say “it was after the tests.”

Reality is that a good education requires not only that a student understand the methods, but (in history, my subject) also that the student have a good mastery of some of the facts, so to make it possible to make a cogent argument in favor or against a future proposed action (we call it “citizenship,” but in Texas the right wing calls that “indoctrination” and they’re agin’ it).

Never failed to have a lesson plan approved by the raters and Dallas district go awry because the lesson plan assumed students had mastered some skill and/or set of facts they had never been introduced to. At that point a good teacher may make a decision to take a few steps back and catch up the students on what they need to know to make the next achievement (“scaffolding” when the raters approve, “remedial reteaching” when the raters want to make it look like the teacher didn’t get something right, even though it wasn’t the teacher’s responsibility, or “off track” when the raters want to ding the teacher).

Teachers are the people who tailor education to the student and class in front of them at the moment. “No size fits any” is a urination-impoverished way of educating the people who will run our nation (not into the ground, we hope), and pick our nursing home facilities.

I read this while sitting on the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard and soon was sobbing uncontrollably. My husband returned from the deck, saw me reading on my phone and asked if someone died. It’s been one year since I retired after 34 years of teaching. Last Day’s letter rekindled all the powerful mixed emotions I felt on my last day- tremendous relief that I could leave just before the CC and its testing arrived in full force, and heartache at leaving my middle schoolers and the magic that happened in the classroom. And there is grieving and loss. So, yes, I told my husband- something is dying. Teachers and students connected in the joy and intensity of learning together will be a dying art if the scripted, robotic factories take over. Like First Day, I’m now retired but still a teacher. My new job is to fight against the machines.

I still have many years left. But after 28 years, I too find myself experiencing grief and loss – especially when I get overwhelmed by the attacks being orchestrated across the nation. These words resonated with me, and I am sure with many of us.

I retired at the end of 2010 after 35 years, but haven’t stopped teaching.

I volunteer at a local elementary school tutoring first and third graders (the two grades where I spent most of my career), and I’ve joined a local public education advocacy group (http://neifpe.blogspot.com/) to help “fight against the machines.”

We’ve networked with others in our state (Indiana) to support public education and fight the privatization efforts by our governor and super-majority legislature. We make sure our voices are heard and have great hope that we can convince enough people to change the makeup of the legislature in the next election.

I also have my own blog where I can rant and rave, vent and complain to my heart’s content.

I miss my students…a lot…but I’m hopeful that, in my own small way, I’m still contributing to their success!